I must add, that the shirt alluded to was made of wool, under which you wore a cotton one, the latter of which you retained during your confinement.

I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, HENRY FOSTER, Inspector of Police.

(To) SIGNOR CARBONI RAFFAELLO.

Ballaarat.

My money is not mentioned though! Very clever: and yet I know it was not Foster who did rob me.

However, good reader, if you believe that a Ballaarat miner, of sober habits and hard at work, has not got about his person, say a couple of one pound rags, well...there let's shut up the book at once, and here is the

END

P.S. If John Bull, cross-breed or pure blood, had been robbed in Italy, half less wantonly, and twice less cruelly, than myself, the whole British press and palaver 'in urbe or orbe terrarum' would have rung the chimes against Popish gendarmes and the holy (!) inquisition of the scarlet city.

So far so good.

A friendless Italian is ROBBED under arrest on British ground, close by the British flag, by British troopers and traps: oh! that alters the case.

What business have these foreign beggars to come and dig for gold on British Crown lands?

BASTA COSI; 'that is', Great works!

Chapter C.

WANTED--Stuff, Anyhow, For The Last Chapter.

If 'The Age', always foremost in the cause of the digger, never mind his language or colour; if 'The Argus' would drop the appending 'a foreigner'

to my name, and extend even unto me the old motto 'fair-play;' if 'The Herald' would set up the pedestal for me whom it has erected as a 'MONUMENT OF GRAt.i.tUDE;' I say, if the gentlemen Editors of the Melbourne Press, on the score of my being an old Collaborateur of the European Press, would for once give a pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether, to drag out of the Toorak small-beer jug, the correspondence on the above matter between

1. SIR CHARLES HOTHAM, K.C.B.

2. W. C. HAINES, C.S.

3. W. FOSTER STAWELL, A.G.

4. Mr. STURT, Police Magistrate.

5. W. H. ARCHER, A.R.G.

6. CAPTAIN M`MAHON.

7. POLICE-INSPECTOR H. FOSTER.

8. Another whom I detest to name, and 9. SIGNOR CARBONI RAFFAELLO, M.L.C. of Ballaarat,

it would astonish the natives, teach what emigration is, and I believe the colony at large would be benefited by it.

There are scores of cases similar to mine, and more important by far, because widows and orphans are concerned in them. 'Sunt tempora nostra!'

Master Punch, do join the chorus; spirited little dear! won't you give a lift to Great-works? Spare not, young chip, or else, the jacka.s.ses in the Australian bush will breed as numerous as the locusts in the African desert.

It is not FEAR that makes me shake at chapters XCII and XCIII.

Good reader, to the last line of this book, my quill shall stick to my word as given in the first chapter. Hence, for the present, this is the LAST. Put by carefully the pipe, we may want it again: meanwhile, FAREWELL.